The Resurrection Keeps Happening
The Resurrection Keeps Happening
Easter is not one morning. It is every morning.
The following is from Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation:
“We don’t need to wait for death to experience resurrection. We can begin resurrection today by living connected to God. Resurrection happens every time we love someone even though they were not very loving to us. At that moment we have been brought to new life. Every time we decide to trust and begin again, even after repeated failures, we are resurrected. Every time we refuse to become negative, cynical, or hopeless, we are experiencing the Risen Christ. We don’t have to wait for it later. Resurrection is always possible now.
The resurrection is not Jesus’s private miracle; it’s the new shape of reality. It’s the new shape of the world. It’s filled with grace. It’s filled with possibility. It’s filled with newness.
The resurrection is not a miracle story to prove the divinity of Christ, something that makes him the winner. It’s a storyline that allows us all to be winners. ALL! No exceptions! There’s no eternal death for anybody: All are invited to draw upon this infinite Source, this infinite Mystery, this infinite Love, this infinite Possibility.” [1]
WHERE HAVE YOU SEEN IT?
Where have you seen resurrection? A friendship thought to be over that somehow found new life. A person who walked through illness and came out the other side with a tenderness they didn't have before. A congregation that lost its building and discovered, in the wilderness, that they were more church than they had ever been.
These are resurrection stories. Not neat or painless. But real.
In John's gospel, Mary Magdalene doesn't recognize Jesus at first. She thinks he's the gardener. The risen Christ looks like someone who tends things, who helps things grow. Who works quietly in the soil where things have been buried.
AN EASTER PRACTICE
This month, I invite you to keep an Easter journal. Each day, write down one small resurrection you witnessed—something that was broken and is being made new, something that felt like an ending but turned out to be a beginning, something dead coming back to life.
It doesn't have to be dramatic. A child's laugh in the middle of your grief. A conversation that opened a door you thought was closed. Daffodils, which have no idea they've spent the winter underground, simply doing what they were made to do.
Father Richard closes with these thoughts:
“Remember, Love has you. Love is you. Love alone, and your deep need for love, recognizes love everywhere else. Remember that you already are what you are seeking. Any fear “that your lack of fidelity could cancel God’s fidelity, is absurd” (Romans 3:3), says Paul. Love has finally overcome fear, and your house is being rebuilt on a new and solid foundation. This foundation was always there, but it took you a long time to find it, for “It is love alone that lasts” (1 Corinthians 13:13). All you have loved in your life and been loved by is eternal and true.” [2]
Happy Easter, friends. Go make peace.
Pastor Leanne
[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, “What Is Resurrection? A New Story Line,” homily, April 5, 2015.
[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass, 2013), 178–179.
Community Presbyterian Church
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